


Bubbles

by mammamiahereigayagain



Category: Original Work
Genre: Modern Era, Other, Redemption, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-17 19:27:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29846334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mammamiahereigayagain/pseuds/mammamiahereigayagain
Summary: This is a work I've been adding on to for a long time. This story is about two damaged people learning how to become okay. Not perfect, not whole, just okay. Okay is what I've learned to appreciate in the waystation between suicidality and increased functionality, between the years where I felt that nothing could help me and the now, where I can finally stand upright and begin to become something other than a puppet to the whims of intrusive thoughts. It's a story about becoming.Also, add a fuckton of fantasy in there. Giant trees, bird people, gnomes, sentient storage balls, that sort of thing.Hope you enjoy. If you're not okay yet, this might be triggering to read, so be cautious.





	1. Melody Now

Shit.  
Shit, shit, shit, SHIT, SHIT!  
The cold, white kitchen echoed footsteps from around the hall, and I had nowhere to hide.  
Here I was, a person with wings, standing in a kitchen and freaking the fuck out.  
What do I do?  
I swept my eyes over the room, scanning for a place to camouflage. It was a pristine, white kitchen. No dirty dishes, no spots on the counter, nothing. It was all edges, and really freaking cold, and solid white, so I couldn’t color camouflage myself.  
Cabinets sat above and below the countertop, a pantry just off the side.  
Pantry!  
The footsteps clunking behind me, I stepped with light feet, swishing into the pantry and drawing it closed, leaving only a tiny crack open to press an ear to. Keep calm, you've done this before, it'll be fine. And if it's not, then you can throw the sand in your backpack into their eyes. It'll be okay.  
I couldn't shift right now, they would hear the crack and grind and squelch of bones and muscles growing and shrinking, snapping into place. I just had to hope they weren't up for a midnight snack.  
The footsteps went from the carpet of the stairs to the cold, hard tiles in the kitchen.  
They didn't sound like a woman’s footsteps, too heavy for that. A man?  
Smelled like a human male, all weird and metallic.  
No. They weren't heavy enough for a man.  
Somewhere in between.  
Maybe the teenager.  
Hey, man. I'm a teenager too. I just popped over for a midnight snack, you know, illegally. It's cool though, right?  
Shit.  
Why couldn't it just leave?  
There was shuffling in the kitchen, then a long, pregnant silence. What was he doing?  
I would have to hit him if he found me.  
I'd been sneaking around in this house for months now, pilfering their food and taking herbs from their garden. Not enough to raise suspicion, just enough to get me through hard times and spells. I’d taken some hair from their dog, an oddly quiet, giant thing with mounds of curly fur and kind black eyes.  
The teenager lived here with his mom and younger brothers, four people in total. Judging by the smell, this was the oldest.  
Whoever it was, I wished he'd fuck off and leave me to his food and liquor. There was a ton of liquor in here, bottles and bottles.  
My ears flicked around to get the best hearing angle. The footsteps had started again.  
Strange. He didn't shuffle like a tired person would. They were too light for that. It was one in the morning, why wasn't he shuffling?  
His feet were purposeful, quick and quiet, like he didn't want anyone to know he was awake. Why? Was he afraid of something?  
Should I be afraid of something?  
My heart fluttered at the thought. Was someone new in the house? I hadn't seen a different car in the driveway, that shouldn't be the case. What was he scared of?   
There was a sound. A hiss, a strange sound of metal on wood that made my feathers stand on end. Just a second long, the hiss made my toes curl and the silence following it hectic.  
What was he doing? The sound replayed in my mind, scraping against it with long nails. The muscles in my jaw flexed and cramped as I tried to force the horrible sound out, but it kept scraping. Fuck.   
Footsteps.  
Snap out of it, he's moving. Focus on that sound instead. Wrenching myself away from the scraping, I focused on the light patter crossing the room. He forced the window up, then crawled out, shutting it behind him with a squeak.  
I let out a long, wavering breath. He was gone, I was safe. It's okay, it's okay, he left. You're fine now. Okay.  
The food crinkled in its plastic packs as I shoved it into my backpack; I always made sure to keep my pillaging light, couldn't have the mom suspecting anything. She lived with a bunch of young boys, so it wasn't very likely, but I wouldn't take any chances. Peanut butter crackers, jerky, apples, fruit gummies, strange black cookies with white filling. The packaging on the food gave gaudy life to the black emptiness of my backpack, and it would soon give life to me. Zip up, tighten the straps, move. Taking a deep breath, I checked the space outside the pantry. No one there, no smells or sounds, no signs of life. I nudged the door open, cringing at the squeak of the hinges. Fuck doors. The cleanliness of the kitchen greeted me with chemical abrasiveness. Nothing human here. Lifting my talons from the clackety tile floor, I waddled toward the window. Stupid loud toes, waking people up before I can steal shit. In the past, people had blamed the noises on rats when they couldn't find the true source, but it was just my loud ass feet. Keeping my eyes and ears on the stairs, I reached my hand over the sink to unlatch the window. Still no signs of activity. Not likely anyone would pop up now. I slid the window open, then began the awkward process of fitting my patchwork body through it. First the clawed feet, which were easy enough. The thighs were harder; didn't want to pull feathers out under my weight. The wings were the most difficult, always the most difficult. Shoulders and back burning, I pulled them in as tightly as I could and bent over until my nose touched my knees. Too flat and they wouldn't clear the sides of the window, too tall and they would scrape the top. Pushing off from the house, I rolled into the soft grass in the front yard. Not too bad a landing, I thought, brushing dirt off of my front. Didn't hit my face or sprain a wrist, that counted as good. The lawn ahead of me yawned a wide, well tended mouth between the house and my wild woods. The garden sat to my left, tinkling with chimes and generously planted with basil and zinnia and strawberries, plants that soaked up the late summer sun like greedy green sponges. The garden sprawled around the side of the house, bordered with goofy, painted rocks who's colors didn't shine in the moonlight. Nothing in the yard besides myself, which was dangerous. Taking a deep breath, I took a step towards the woods. Crossing the huge lawn, I could feel eyes coming from all angles. The flat yard expanded in every direction, a nauseating eternity of black and white grass and rustling leaves. The wind whispered over me, sending chills up my spine and tinkling the wind chimes. Nausea crept in at the dreadful percussion, and I started to run. Too vulnerable a position to be in. Eyes were watching me. Run faster.   
Heart racing, I picked up the pace, sprinting towards the treeline. If they catch you, you could get sent back. They could find you and kill you. It's not true, but I can't ignore the possibility. I can't ignore it. The trees race towards me with an awkward, poky embrace, and I only stop when I meet it, hands on my knees, head in a spin. I'm fine, there's no need to be this anxious. I've done this twenty times, and I've never been caught. Still, there was a shadow of a chance, and when there was a shadow there was substance. Carelessness would get me caught, and I couldn't have that. Of course, it would be less careless to not sneak into houses, but that wasn't an option. Yeah, I definitely loved sneaking into someone else's house at one o'clock in the morning because a hog ate all of my plants. Horace, the big one with the tusks. He was the size of a Golden Retriever, and he was the meanest son of a bitch you ever did see.  
I had a pencil length scar on my leg from his attempts to kill me, and he had one from me stabbing the fuck out of him.  
I thought I had run him off, but apparently not, seeing as I had woken up to my fall harvest in shreds.  
I thought the perimeter set up by my dryad friend would keep the hogs off, maybe hurt them if they got too close.  
What was I thinking? She probably set something down that would very kindly, very delicately suggest that the hogs turn around. What did I think would happen with a dryad?  
Damned dryads and their passive ways, all “nature takes what nature needs, the rest is what we are grateful for”.  
Bullshit. Nature can suck my fucking toes.  
Well, dryads can. Nature on this world was cool enough. Picking through the undergrowth, I found a sturdy tree, strong enough for me to get a solid launch off the middle of it and tall enough to where I could jump without worrying about running into shorter trees. I dug my claws in and scaled it, pulling myself up foot by foot. The higher I climbed, the clearer the air became. Brown leaves and bird nests passed me by, illuminated by the full moon. The smell of dirt, bark, and moss sat in the air, pleasantly asleep and full of sharp, invigorating life. Each deep breath of it erased the repulsive kitchen smell, and slowly but surely, I started to relax. They couldn't find me now, even if they tried.  
I pulled myself up to the last stable branch, swinging my legs over it and gripping it with my taloned toes. I grimaced as I flexed my wings, feeling the burn of keeping them so tightly bunched up along the place where they connected to my back.  
It felt good to stretch them, to let them flow in the gentle breeze. For now, they still flickered a dark brown color, my primary feathers glinting a deep, surly red. They always did that when I was afraid. The leftover anxiety still swirled around inside, but in a few minutes it would subside, and my wings would return to their default.  
The smells of the forest were disrupted by the tangy smell of wing oil, and I hoped that, somewhere, that fucking hog smelled it and felt fear. The sky lay before me like an open book, words written in the stars and galaxies beyond, the story of this world shining down on my face.  
I hadn't found time to fly lately, so this would leave me sore.  
Crouching, I primed for take-off.


	2. Ozzy Now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **TW** Self Harm  
> In this chapter, we meet Ozzy, a young, broken man.

Goodbye, goodbye.  
Bye, bye, Miss American pie…  
Goodbye.  
The thought waltzed, delirious and almost silly, into my head, sweeping most of what had been raging through it out in an instant of freedom. Goodbye should have been a more permanent word to me, but it felt like the word-version of a toy, something childish. This wasn't a game.  
I felt my heartbeat it in my ears, my fingertips, echoing into the air and bouncing off the trees. Goodbye wasn't quite right. Maybe goodbye with a question mark. Goodbye?  
I took the knife from my waistband and laid it across my wrist, dazed as moonlight glinted on the steel.  
I would have been afraid of it if I didn't feel numb.  
No one could see me, not who I was, who I could have been if my situation were different, if Mom hadn't been holding me under her thumb for the past two years, spreading sick lies, threatening me, threatening my brothers through me.  
If Dad hadn't taken everything with him when he died.  
If, if, if…  
Ifs were useless.  
I couldn't escape from them, not really. They would have scared me if I wasn't so numb.  
Maybe this would make me feel something, anything. Maybe I would feel alive again. And if I died, who the hell cared? I had jack-fucking-squat to live for. I had to believe that, right? Because I didn't. I had to believe that.  
I closed my eyes, grinding my teeth as I struggled to steady my hand. It was shaking, oh, God, my hand was shaking.  
I was shaking all over, and I wasn't able to stop it.  
Oh, God!  
Breathing through my nose in tight, panicked bursts, I pressed down on the handle of the knife.  
The pain flared, and then the bleeding started.  
Right below my hand, like an impression from an elastic hairband.  
Deep red cut a trail down my arm, dripping into the leaves. Dark red, Twizzler red.  
It was...it was real.  
The pain was real.  
It was here, it was mine.  
My hands still trembled as I took in what I had done to myself. It...it hurt. It bled, I could see it bleeding!  
It...  
It made sense.  
I was doing this.  
I was doing this to myself.  
No one else could do this to me, inflict this pain. It was my own.  
It made sense.  
Blood dripped in a languid stream from the horizontal cut, falling onto the forest floor.  
Saliva dripped from an open mouth, begging for more.  
I wasn't full. Did I want to be full? The thought would scare me if I could feel anything.  
Screwing my eyes shut, I moved the knife up my arm an inch or so, biting my tongue as I slid the edge over my skin again, oh, deeper than last time. Why not. I hissed out a breath through my teeth, feeling the knife cut through me, feeling my hand controlling it. It was perverse, awful. I shouldn't be doing this, but…  
I could feel this. I had control. I was here, I was bleeding. I was.  
Then, the stream flowed faster. A cold sweat broke out over my arms, the hair on the back of my neck standing on end. Oh, no.  
My eyes snapped open.  
A river of blood slid down my arm, flowing fast and true.  
It spurted out with my heartbeat, Heartbeat grew louder every second, vision blackening around the edges with each pulse.  
That was...that was a lot of blood…  
My knees hit the forest floor before I could stop them, then the world blurred and flashed red as my head joined them  
Oh, God, that was so much blood.  
The black wilderness stretched on forever, but I lay in a halo of moonlight, mind racing with everything besides the rationality that I needed. Oh, so much blood, soaking into the ground, into the leaves, staining.  
I hit an artery, an artery that was not a good thing to hit, that could kill me. That could kill me, I could die, did I want to die? I'm not sure if I want to die right now, in the woods, what am I going to do, I'm bleeding out on the forest floor. Oh God, the bears could eat me or the coyotes could find me, what have I done, what have I done, I can't leave my brothers alone, what have I done? I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm...I'm sorry...   
My vision was fading into black, and my hands scrabbled weakly at the forest floor.  
I had to find some way to stop the bleeding, so much bleeding, oh God!  
I had to stop it, I couldn't go yet I had to protect my brothers from her even though they hated me I had to help them.  
Breathing hard, I pressed a hand over the raspberry stream spurting out of me, trying to keep it in, to hold the blood in for just a bit longer. The mouth spilled over, hungry for my life, hungry for pain.  
Please, please, please.  
“Hey!” I croaked, voice hoarse from crying. My head and my stomach swam as I pressed down on the wound that I had made, as panic rose in me.  
I didn't want to die like this.  
I didn't want someone to find me like this.  
“Help, help me!” I cried, strangled and child-like. I was screaming, tears pouring down my face. So stupid, so stupid, thinking I could escape from this, from myself. I would die here, and no one would care, and I would become nothing. My brothers would be my mom's next victims, and it would be my fault. My fault…  
I'm sorry.  
No one could hear me.  
“Help me, help me, help me, help me…"  
Waves of shivers racked my body and squeezed it, and I couldn't stand up. If I could stand, if I could go somewhere, anywhere. I could go back home...oh, God, I couldn't go back home, not like this. I couldn't let her see me like this, she would use it against me, push me further.  
I growled out of frustration, out of anger, out of fear.  
Why was everything getting so blurry?  
Oh, shit, oh, shit…  
I’m dying, this is the end.  
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry...


	3. Melody Now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Melody finds Ozzy

What was that?  
I lifted from my crouched position to cock an ear.  
It sounded like someone who needed help.  
Pleading, repeated apologies.  
What the hell?  
When I took a breath through my nose, I got a clue.  
Blood.  
Lots of blood. Human blood, to be exact. It reeks like nothing else can.  
The coppery smell invaded my sinuses and sat on my tongue, sharp and metallic.  
It smelled kind of...kind of familiar.  
I took another deep whiff, leaning down to do so.  
It smelled like...like, uh…  
Oh, shit.  
It was him.  
It was the kid from earlier, the blond boy who snuck out. He had that nasty human boy smell mixed with the scent of potting soil. This was him.  
Why was he bleeding? What had happened? Did he do it, or did someone else?  
Shit!  
Carefully, I picked through the top branches, getting another whiff.  
I couldn't smell anyone else, no one besides the sleeping dryads and that god-awful hog, sitting out there somewhere with his shitty little hog babies.  
That was a lot of blood.  
There wasn't anyone else out here to help him, not really. I shouldn't let him bleed out.  
I owed him that much, seeing as I'd been stealing from him for a while now.  
He'd saved my life a few times with his food. I could return the favor.  
Besides, he was a person. I couldn't let someone else die. Not again. That wasn't me anymore.  
Another good point: my life wasn't at stake, so I could help him keep his without repercussions.  
Damn it.  
I'd been so ready to just call it a night and fall into bed. I could be bad at empathy, but I wasn’t willing to let someone die today. Stupid conscience.  
Jumping from the top of the tree, I let my wings parachute behind me, a dull pain ringing through my neck and chest as the wings whipped back.  
Gliding, I landed in a clumsy, feathery somersault, catching impact with my face after I tried to land on my knees.  
Groaning, I picked myself back up, pulling my wings back and shaking them out a little, feeling the pins and needles from exercising them after a long stretch of keeping them folded.  
They made soft, whooshing noises in the darkness, sending a current of air through the trees in front of me and shaking the leaves.  
I didn't fold them all of the way, no, just enough to keep them against my back, but also to let them air out.  
I made my way towards the smell, carefully picking my way among the sharp rocks and sticks, trying to disturb the forest as little as possible.  
I crouched, walking bent over so my tail feathers didn't make any noise.  
I widened my eyes as the smell got stronger, straining to see in the parody of light given off by the moon. There were so many shadows, dark stripes thrown over the ground by trees. Cicadas clicked in the darkness, crickets chirped under leaves, branches quivered overhead. I flinched at the sounds, turning their way and expecting the boy.  
I winced as my right wing caught on a branch.  
I pulled both of them in close, letting the tops sit over my head.  
The smell of blood almost made me gag, it was so potent. The smell of fear didn't help much, coming in waves of sour pungence. Fear smelled like bad soup, bad rabbit stew. It smelled like a ripped up garden. It smelled like a handler trying to find me, threatening to kill me. It translated into my own thoughts as soon as it found my nose. It was strong, and it was something else, too. Something I could only describe as...I don't know, loud? It was loud, but in a smell way.  
Pushing aside a bush full of thorns, I caught sight of his outline.  
Tall, blonde, skinny outline, covered in blood. The blood glistened in the moonlight, along with something else, something that flashed silver.  
He wasn't moving. Bathed in moonlight, a sandstone statue, he wasn't moving. Why wasn't he moving?   
Why aren't you moving? Go!  
Right. I ran forward, kneeling at his side and flipping him onto his back. His skin was grey and covered in sweat, shirt and boxers soaked with it and striped with blood.  
Wow, that's a lot of sweat.  
He looked like a ghost, pale and slathered with blood. A really sweaty ghost.  
His eyes were closed, his lips parted, shaking and lackluster. Still alive. Definitely still alive.  
He hadn't passed out from blood loss, that much was true. There wasn't enough blood for that. There was an alarming amount, a puddle the size of a small plate, streams on the ground and striped over his face, but not enough. He'd probably panicked and fainted at the sight of it all.  
Okay, okay. Stay calm. Stay calm and stop the bleeding. You've done it before, you can do it again, stop the bleeding.  
Find the bleeding first, stupid.  
The silver glint caught my eye again, and I had to face where it was coming from. A long knife sat on the ground next to him, its edge lined with blood.   
He had done this to himself.  
I lifted up his wrists, falling back when a stream of blood cut a warm stripe across my face.  
Fuck!  
Disgust and alarm mixed in my stomach as the blood dripped over my mouth, my chin. The metallic scent slid into my nose as well as my mouth, clamping it's penny flavor down on my tongue. Shit, shit, shit! Frantically, I spit the blood out. Ew, ew, ew! Fucking gross!  
I clapped a hand over the wound, pressing it to the ground and staunching the blood flow.  
With one hand I grabbed the edge of my shirt and put it between my teeth.  
Carefully, I tore a wide strip from the thin fabric of the shirt, slicing through it with a talon.  
Working quickly, I slid the cloth under the hand keeping pressure, wrapping the wound as fast as possible. It wasn't about the fabric, but the pressure of it.  
I tore more strips from the shirt, hating the sound of each rip. His pain was so, ridiculously obvious. I had only just met him, and I could see it written all over his face, could see it in his posture and now in a puddle on the ground. I hated his family for not seeing it, not doing anything to prevent this. He could have been found by anyone, could have been raped or kidnapped or simply abandoned. They let him fall into my hands, and that was intolerable. I didn't know him, so they were lucky I had been stealing from them enough to feel empathy for their boy. Damn them.  
I studied his face as I worked, knowing I had time. He wouldn't bleed out, not anytime soon. I estimated he started bleeding about two minutes ago, seeing as the artery was still pulsing. It took about ten minutes for someone to bleed out from the wrist, so yeah, I had time. I'd done it before.  
I narrowed my eyes at him, squinting, trying to see. Why had he done this to himself?  
I never thought about what went on in his house, about what could be happening behind the scenes. I just cared about the food. I wasn't sorry for that, but I was sorry for lack of explanation. Why did he do this? Wasn't he happy in his perfect house, with his perfect family? What could have hurt him so badly that he resorted to this?  
Shit, what would I do with him now? Where would I take him? I had some healing salve at my treehouse that could fix this, but I didn't want to leave him here to go get it. My house was five minutes away by flight, ten through the underbrush.  
I couldn't leave him for that long.  
I could drag him back to his house, but that would take a long time, and, well...  
I doubted he wanted to be there. Family like that, all idyllic and such, this would be a shock. He came all the way out here to avoid them knowing, so bringing him back didn't seem like the right thing to do.  
Putting a fourth strip of fabric over the seeping third strip, I frowned down at his face.  
It was weird to actually see him, not just the picture in his house. Every time I snuck in, it was there; a blonde, middle aged woman with three young boys in her arms and, off to the side, an older, red haired man with his arm around the teenager. They were smiling. He wasn't smiling now, and it looked like he hadn't for a while. He had dimensions, edges, softness. He had negative space and skin. Non-feathered skin, non-winged skin. He looked kind of wonky without wings. All humans did, small and clumsy. Bald. No stripes, feathers, scales, nothing.  
He was here now, tiny with his perverse halo of blood. The picture I knew so little about was here, unconscious, looking a little less gray around the edges than he had a few seconds ago.  
He wasn't flat anymore, and he was nowhere near happy.  
What a notion.  
Then, his eyes opened.  
Before I knew what was happening, he bolted upright.  
His forehead smashed into my nose.   
Ow, shit!  
My hands flew to my nose, reflex tears streaming from my eyes. My feathers bristled and creaked as they stood on end.  
Groaning, I tilted my head up, trying to stop the tears and the blood.  
My face was on fire, throbbing and burning, burning so badly.  
Shit, shit, shit…  
Come on, come on, get a hold of yourself. Recover. Pretend the pain doesn't exist.  
I filled my lungs with as much air as possible, blocking out the pain, then let it out. Deep, deep breath, let it out.  
Okay. Ow.  
Gently, I felt the bridge of my nose, checking for a break.  
I didn't feel a break, but I did feel throbbing.  
“Damn you, kid!” I growled, digging my nails into my palms to keep a hot rush of anger at bay.  
“I...I, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry…” he trailed off, his voice distant and warbling behind me. It was deeper than I had expected it to be, but soft.  
Breathing through my mouth, I clenched my jaw against the pain.  
Pressing it down, I turned back around. He needed my help more than I needed to be angry.  
He sat, his eyes focused on a point far away.  
He was both beautiful and grisly. His curly blonde hair shone in the moonlight, long lashes catching the soft silver. Oval cheekbones, smattered with freckles, stood high and proud.  
All of these, as well as his clothes were spattered with his blood. Man, I would give anything for those clothes. Clean, white T-shirt, light blue boxers. I could make so much money off of those clothes if I stripped them of his blood. Maybe even if I didn't. Some people from...other places like the taste of human.  
Tears coursed down his cheeks, his eyes dull. He looked down at his body, his arms, eyes lazily tracking the stripes of crimson traced over him, the bloody compression bandage circling his wrist.   
He frowned a little, not quite able to connect the dots.  
“Where...where did all of this come from? Who...who are you?” He slurred.  
He didn't look at me.  
His eyes were glued to the blood, fastened to it.  
Blinking the tears and the pain away, I stepped towards him. This wouldn't be fun.  
He would see my wings.  
He would forget them later, but he would see them now and have time to flip out.  
“Hey, bud. It's okay, it'll all be fine. Just listen to me, okay?” I took another step, waiting for him to look up. He just kept staring at the blood, not really seeing it, not seeing anything.  
Slowly, I crouched beside him and touched his shoulder.  
Still no move to look at me.  
That was good.  
“Hey, hey, it's gonna be okay. I just have to help you. For that to happen, you need to help me,” I explained.  
He blinked in slow motion, swayed a little.  
At a turtle's pace, he lifted his head to look at me. Half of his face was doused in blood, his teeth spotted with it. Gross. Mouth open in a grimace, he stared, shaking, shaking violently.  
His big blue eyes didn't seem to register me at first, and that didn't surprise me much.  
When he did, however, he said   
something...strange.  
“Are you an angel?”  
He asked this in such earnest that I almost laughed out loud.  
His cloudy eyes widened, gliding over the edges of my wings, taking in their immensity. He didn't seem to be in the right state to freak out, instead somewhere blurry and gray.  
With a trembling hand, he reached up to touch my feathers. Pulling my wings back, I tried to get him to meet my eyes.  
“No, no touching, absolutely not. Don't do that,” I protested, dodging his feeble attempts to touch my wings. This was annoying. Stupid kid, stop it!   
“Hey! What did I say! Stop. Now.” The kid stopped, eyes dimmer than before, and put his hand down. Finally.  
Wait.  
Shit.  
It had come out in a growl. Didn't mean for it to come out at all. Had to remember that he was hurt. Get past your “fuck off” instinct.   
For now, he was in pain. You help people who are in pain, that's the thing to do. Right.  
“Hey, uh, what's your name?” I asked, putting my hand back on his shoulder.  
His eyebrows drew together and he bit his lip. Shaking his head, frustrated, he glared at the ground.  
“Ozzy, my...my name is Ozzy,” he said, fixing his eyes on his wrist.  
The clouds hanging over him shifted for a second, and horror seeped in. Oh, stars, this wasn't good. His shoulders slumped, and his face began to do something weird.   
It started to contort around the edges, twist and turn and crumble. He sniffled, lips twisting into a grimace, and stuttered out something incomprehensible, although it sounded like a really wet, snot-bubbly “sorry”. Oh, this wasn’t good. Discomfort wormed around in my stomach and sympathy pangs flashed across my chest without consent. I had to do something.  
“Hey, hey, this is a hard situation, but you have to help me out. Can you walk?”  
I asked, trying to meet his eyes.  
He only seemed to slip further away, eyes dull and heavy-lidded. The bleeding had mostly stopped, so this must be shock. Maybe something else, I don't know.  
“I am...I'm scared, I don't…I'm sorry I hit you, I'm sorry,” he babbled, raising trembling hands to his face and pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes.  
His bleeding wrist rubbed against the collar of his shirt and his cheek, a thick, red streak painting both. I saw a second cut that I hadn't noticed before, one closer to his hand. It was half-closed, still seeping.  
Jesus, this kiddo was messed up.  
“Hey, listen. Listen to me, okay? You have to help me. Do you want me to bring you home, to get someone's help? Do you know anyone?”  
He started sobbing, pressing his face into his hands, his entire body quaking.  
Shit, shit, shit.  
I needed him to tell me something, anything that would help me. The bandage wouldn't last forever, and he needed some serious help outside of medical attention. He needed someone to get him through...whatever the hell this was. He was crying really hard, sobbing, snot and blood staining the front of his shirt.  
Shit, this was not my area of expertise.  
What do I...how do I...  
Jesus, what do I do to help him?  
Uh…  
Okay, I have to start somewhere. I had to get him calm, as calm as possible. I had to get that done. That was step one.  
Okay, so...did he need a hug? Primates like hugs, don't they? Maybe he needed physical contact, some endorphin-triggering contact. I wasn't human, but his body wouldn't tell the difference.  
Oh, I had to touch him, covered in blood and mucus and dirt, ugh. Gross.  
Jesus, just hug him already. Look how hurt he is. Your cleanliness can wait. Wow, my subconscious was so mad at me that it referenced a deity I don’t believe in.  
Okay, okay. I'll hug him. This nasty, crying, unfamiliar person needed my help.  
I'm going to spend two hours cleaning his fluids out of my feathers.  
I slid my arms around his shaking shoulders, closing my eyes and squeezing him tight.  
Okay.  
My wings curled around his shaking form, enveloping him with a rustle of feathers against skin.  
Still crying, he leaned into me, hot and sweaty. Really sweaty. Okay, still crying. What do I do?  
“Hey, little bird, it's okay. It's okay, little bird,” I soothed, rubbing his shoulder.  
I had heard a mother saying that to her child once.  
“It'll be okay, shhhh, shhhh.”  
He cried harder, his heart racing so fast and hard that I could hear it.  
Shit!  
Damn it. If he was a bird person, I would stroke his wings, but he wasn't a bird person, so he didn't have them.  
Damn it!  
Okay, what else? What else?  
I could try...singing to him?  
I wasn't called Melody for nothing. I could try singing to calm him down.  
What song, what song? I didn't know songs! I lived in the middle of the woods, what songs did I know?  
Okay, songs, songs…  
“Hey, birdy, it's okay. Slow down, little bird, it's alright. It's okay, little dove, shhh,” I said, trying to think of literally anything.  
His sweaty, skinny body slowed down a little, the crying and snot-spewing coming at a decreased tempo.  
I caught a whiff of him-  
Oh, fuck. That was not a good smell. Bile rose in my throat, and I had to clamp my teeth together to keep it from progressing. His skin burned with true self loathing and guilt, his sweat swam with searing, screaming pain, and his blood…  
Well, his blood spoke for itself.  
I took a look at him from the side, mortified.  
Who had done this to him?  
His face was blotchy, spotted with red and damp. Streaks of congealing blood cut trails down his cheeks, and his eyes were swollen.  
He was in pain, and he didn't know what to do. He was lost.  
Oh, kid…  
“Hey, little bird, it's okay. It's okay.”  
The sobs began to subside, and he started to relax, his shoulders lowering, heart slowing.  
“I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I...it hurts, it hurts…” he whimpered, gripping his arm with a weak hand and groaning.  
A pang of pity jagged through me, sharp and smooth as a knife.  
Ah, kiddo.  
“I know it does, I know. I'm sorry about that. Right now, I need you to help me fix it, okay? Do you want to go home, so we can get some help? Can you tell me where you live?”  
Had to give the pretense that I didn't know where he lived because I definitely didn't steal from his house.  
Even if he didn't want to go home, there had to be some way to help him.  
He could either help me take him home, or let me bring him to my house. Town was too far away for us to walk, especially with the amount of blood he'd lost and the trauma he'd been through. He probably wasn't up for much walking.  
“No, don't bring me home, please don't, I can't...I can't be there right now, I just   
can't,” he sobbed, staring at a nearby tree and wiping his nose.  
“So, can you walk? I'll take you to my house if you can. It's nearby, it's safe. I can help you heal up,” I pressed, hugging him tight.  
“I just need you to say yes, kid.”  
He turned his head, meeting my eyes.  
He saw me this time, looked right into me. His eyes were dark, layered. They had hard edges, raw divots, scars.  
I didn't look away. His eyes were like a broken mirror; I saw myself reflected in jagged bits and pieces, staring right back.  
Oh, birdy. I knew what it was like to feel that pain.  
“It'll be okay, just say yes. I am an angel, right?”  
His lips parted, eyes shifting almost as quickly as I could.  
“I...I…”  
He threw up all over my shirt.  
It happened so suddenly I didn't know how to react. He just...threw up. All over. My shirt.  
It was warm, and it smelled...oh, Jesus, it was running down my front, oh, stars above…  
My eyes went wide, and I tried to take a deep breath. Deep breath in, deep breath out, deep breath in, deep breath out.  
“Oh, oh, God, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry…”  
His voice sounded more lucid this time, so that was good.  
But he had still…  
Puked. All over. My shirt.  
It was the shock, the shock of it all. He had puked. Because of shock. All over my shirt.  
Grimacing at the feeling of it on my skin, I tried to keep from screaming in frustration. This had been a long-ass day, and he had just…  
Okay. Okay, I was fine. I was just fine.  
“Oh, God, I'm sorry! Oh, no, no, no,” he stammered, his voice definitely clear now.  
Okay, okay.  
“It's fine. It's okay, just wait a second,” I said, clenching my teeth.  
Okay.  
I wiggled out of my shirt, pulling the nasty piece of clothing over my head. Covered in blood and vomit...I would just come back for it tomorrow, see what I could do with the ruined material.  
I looked down, checking my leg feathers. No vomit there, good. Nope, no vomit had seeped through my shirt to my chest feathers either.  
Okay.  
He was still stuttering apologies, eyes wide with horror and embarrassment.  
“I'm so, so sorry, I just...I just have something wrong with me, I'm sorry…”  
I shook my head, reigning in my disgust.  
“It's okay, it is just fine. Now help me get you safe. Come on.”


End file.
